


Reconciliation is Slow

by hrewannabe



Series: Honeysuckle: Silver Days [2]
Category: Werewolf: The Apocalypse, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Gen, Liberal use of Mindspeech, Pentex, Samsa, dead family briefly mentioned, mute character, reconcilliation, talk about killing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 01:18:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18042719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrewannabe/pseuds/hrewannabe
Summary: She' sitting in her makeshift den of blankets and furs when the little Silent Strider makes her presence known





	Reconciliation is Slow

She’s in her den. Warm thick blankets drape from the bedframe covering it’s underside, pillows and the mattress under it creating a warm hideaway from the bright lights around the room that she has been allowed to stay in. The thick blankets block out the scent of the various other garou that sleep in the room, although many of them had moved out after, well after, learning of John. Still they serve their purpose and even if they are not dirt, are nor a wall carved by herself and a mate, are not a real den, she is not alone here. So she sits, nestled in the den in the cearn, warm blankets tucked around her, soft light filtering in from the thinner blanket creating a door. She watches her thick worn homid fingers picking and pulling at thread through soft fur. The soft repeated motions lull her into a soft haze in the aftermath of an afternoon hunt. She’s focused, everything locked onto the way the thread weaves back and forth, left to right, again, and again, and again just like the first time Carol had shown her.

She is blown back in time it feels like with the thought, the motions, and the full feeling in her belly. She remembers being six winters old and watching the girl thread her silver looking needle, carefully, and setting to her task, Mea at her elbow. Her eyes had been big, she had never watched such a thing happen and Carol had worked for days on the scrap of fabric and yarn until she had presented a sweater to Honeysuckle and Mea. Mea had scowled and shrugged it on, Honeysuckle had crowed and howled with excitement, nails growing sharp with joy before tugging it on, soft material getting stuck on her nails. Carol had laughed and laughed at the sight of the two of them. Soft peals of laughter sounding like sunlight.

The sound of soft knocking on the ground draws her from the warm memory and to the motion her hands are still carrying. Her nose wrinkles, the urge to sniff for scent and person hits her, but the feeble nose of her homid form proves no use and so she stills in the moment. Large hands pausing in their motion so she can utter a guttural “Come in” voice rusty from spending all day quiet. She watches the flap to see who will worm their way in, doesn’t expect the slim, skin and bones that is the pup Roxie to come crawling in with her big eyes. She watches as she slouches, mouth shrinking and eyes growing big and mournful like a pup begging for food. Her fingers continue the pattern of stitch after stitch in her sewing, fingertips finding the lines and scores as easily as the first time she had been shown. She watches Roxie, makes no move to speak, eyes sharp, gaze assessing.

Silent.

The pup opens her mouth, before snapping it shut. She watches as the pup tucks their head in close to their chest, hiding their eyes, acting weak, showing deference while fiddling with a pillow. After a moment the girl, eyes still cast low to the pillow in her hands thrusts said pillow at Honeysuckle. Who pauses in her sewing, but doesn’t pick up the offered pillow. She is warry of this interaction. The last time they had spoken, shared words it was to her angrily breaking the mind link and then silence for weeks. Instead she simply sets the needle into the fabric making sure it won’t fall out, before setting her work and sewing materials into her lap, giving Roxie her full attention. Her head tilts to one side, mouth a soft still line. The pup’s face scrunches up, eyebrows furrowing, cheeks blowing out and then slimming back down, but no teeth. Instead of turning tail and running or rolling onto her belly the little human scooches closer to her, and then slowly as if they are afraid that she will unleash all of her anger in a snap of her too human teeth at her throat, they lay their small head with its tangled braided hair on her leg.  Honeysuckle watches this, makes no move towards the pillow and instead picks up her sewing and resumes her work golden eyes narrowed.

“What do you want up?” her voice, soft as it can be when one spends their whole life yelling and howling themselves hoarse fills the makeshift den.

Instead of an answer the mute pup shrugs and pushes their way further into her lap and the Galliard tenses. Her shoulders rise up, the muscles in her calves and thighs shifting, hands though stay relaxed, steadily moving the bone needle and thick thread back and forth, over and over and over. “What do you want pup?” she asks again as the pup slides off of her. Their hands move in a way that is some other language that the others have told her about. Her face is pulled together and demur as she does so.

“I don’t know what you want pup. But it’s gotta be important for you to come now” ad she huffs before sending out the faintest of mind links to the small teenager. The link is the barest brush of minds, just enough to catch espically after the girl had broken the bond before in frustration and anger and _left._

She can feel the way the girl is clutching, grasping, clinging to the mind link. ‘I miss you’ the soft lithe voice slips through her mind. Roxie shakes her head. ‘I still think you’re wrong, but I miss you’ the girl winces and looks away, eyes downcast and Honeysuckle cannot not find it in her weary old heart to care.

“I will not change my mind” her firm voice rings in the air around them, instead of through the link. “I cannot” she wavers, voice trembling for a moment as teeth snap razor sharp on the t and fangs flash in the dim light of the den. She watches the girl lean back, throat hunched into her sweater.

‘I don’t understand.’ Roxie whines, the sound akin to more of a lupus echoes in Honeysuckle’s mind than a two legged. ‘It’s not their fault. They’re not Pentex’ and Honeysuckle wants to rage, wants to growl and bare her fangs and scream to Gaia and Ahroun Luna her pain over Pentex, but instead she waits until the girl looks into her eyes.

“What _they_ are is suffering. They are- look I don’t expect you to understand the rage that boils here” a hand raises and sharp nails dig into the skin over her heart. She can feel them growing sharper with the rage rushing through her. “I don’t want you to know it either. You will not meet their fate-“and all she can see is her son’s bloody bleeding form limping and dragging himself into the cearn his sister, her daughter nowhere to be found. _Pentex._ “You have your own” she whispers, words working past clenched teeth, quieter than when she had started. She does not look up, doesn’t see the way the little Silent Strider’s face softens and grows curious.

‘Their fate?’

The she-wolf’s hands tremble and she has to pause to rethread the needle, she sits there frustratingly trying. “it’s nothing you should worry about” her voice hisses out, less of a snap, but only due to the grinding of her teeth and she stiffens more so when Roxie places her hands on her knees, looking up with curious eyes and a small shy smile. She doesn’t say anything but Honeysuckle has known body language longer than she has known human words and the cub is reading curious, and inquisitive and she will not share the story of her pups with this one that has wanted nothing to do with her. “I will not cave to you like bones in my jaws about this” and the thread finally slips through the eye and she resumes her sewing, hands shaking with the faintest of tremors. Roxie removes her hands and looks down at the blankets, she pulls at the soft fabrics and plush pillows.

‘Is this about John?’

“No.” John is another issue entirely, a beautiful, radiant, wonderful issue. “John has not been my only pup, merely my last” and she cannot help being cruel, because she is _hurting,_ and she has tried to be gentle with this pup that knows nothing but it _hurts_ to speak of her pups. “even though the wolf in you is awake enough to sing, there’s much you don’t know, and much you will _never_ understand.”

Roxie furrows her brow, mouth small and after a few moments lets out a tired sigh and then looks up with all the ferocity that sales right into Honeysuckles heart. ‘Then show me’ she demands. ‘You say the Samsa can’t be helped, that I’m too small and ignorant to understand, too young? Then prepareme. Teach me!’ They surge forward a bit, chest pushed out, and the little Strider’s chest heaves despite no words having left her lips.

Honeysuckle laughs. She chokes on the sound as it drips by her lips “I _have tried,_ you are not ignorant because you are small- _her granddaughter stands fierce and bloody-_ or young _\- she stands in the forest two and a half summers old with pups licking at her heels and she is human, unsteady-_ Do you not think I’ve always been this? I was new once to this as well. I’ve been this- she gestures to herself with the hand holding the needle- this! For twenty-two summers. I have outlived _everyone_ , you are only ignorant in your inability to grasp that you are not the only one who did not ask for this” her teeth flash and she is not ashamed. Will not be cowed in this, she is old, has outlived all her siblings, her children and their children all save John. So she watches, she is old and tired and careful in her interactions with other garou now, so she notes the way the little pup startles backward, the way their small jaw hangs open and their weak chin quivers before it snaps shut.

‘Neither did the Smasa’ they argue.

“I _know_ ” Honeysuckle snaps, leans forward a snarl almost making its way past her lips. “but we do not condone others to tend our sickness, it is _mercy_! That existence, the way that they are living: in cages, their minds gone? That is not life! They are not like us, they are in pain, like a packmate gone to rabies it is kinder to grant them this than continued existence.”

‘Who are we to decide what’s best for them?!’ the girls volume raises in her mind and leaves her ears ringing despite the lack of sound, and then the girl is shrink away, petulant but Honeysuckle cannot stop now because.

“You’re right” she snarls, the sound finally braking lose form her chest and she stills. Hands dropping her sewing, fabric and fur falling and pooling into her lap, pulling into herself as if the anger that had raised her shoulders had fled with the dropped fabric and thread. “We aren’t” she says quiet and soft into the space. “But then who are to decide what to do with the Black Spirals then? What do we do then with our own brothers who’ve turned, and whose flesh and fur rot. Do we leave them like the Samsa to roam where they may? To kill who they want? We protect those that can’t protect themselves and sometimes that means hard decisions. Sometimes you can’t fix everything or save everyone and they, the Samsa. They’re one of them. Even if like us they did not ask for it.”

The girl is quiet for a long time, makes no move across the mindlink before a tentative ‘I don’t want you to be right’ whispers its way across. ‘I don’t have another way. But I want there to be.’ She moves her face to make eye contact once again. ‘We aren’t doomed to repeat our mistakes. Even if we can’t heal them, we have to try. Isn’t that what separates us from Pentex? Trying to preserve what Gaia made?’ Roxie slows her speech as she talks about the Earth Mother, carefully stepping around what Honeysuckle thinks makes her nervous and a twisted sound, as if a laugh crawled out of her chest and lungs broken sounds.

“Sometimes, all we are is mistakes.  Gaia didn't make the Samsa, human hands did. Human hands took something she made and twisted it the way fire does flesh. There is nothing there to preserve. They're suffering!  More than we probably ever will, sometimes it is far kinder to offer death than a continuous existence of agony. " The pup holds her gaze, braid falling over her shoulder with a twist and small shiver.

‘Are you sure? Are you really sure?’ she asks, gaze soft now the curiosity gone and the anger mellowed.

“That it is kinder to offer them death?” she asks meeting her eyes, bold and sad and brash twirled into one. “I’ve never been more sure of anything except for how much I love my pups.”

‘What if I prove you wrong?’

Her gaze hardens, amber eyes narrowing. Then you do so.”

The small girl’s face narrows and contorts in frustration as if not believing her words before a small ‘okay’ makes its way across the bond before ducking her head, smiling wide and leaving Honeysuckle there. Alone. Shaken.


End file.
